The U.S. House of Representatives voted Tuesday to approve short-term government funding through December 11, avoiding a potential shutdown before the November midterm elections. The resolution passed with a vote of 370 to 48, and included bipartisan support as well as opposition from members across both parties. Twenty-nine Democrats and 19 Republicans voted against the measure, with some Republicans citing specific Senate-added provisions as reasons for their opposition. One of those changes was a delay in banning intoxicating hemp products, and another involved temporarily blocking a rule that would give more power to political appointees in distributing federal grants.
House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole said he agreed with some of the changes but not others, yet still supported passing the bill to avoid a shutdown, according to UPI. Cole noted that the vote gave lawmakers time to work on more comprehensive funding legislation after the election cycle.
Both the House and Senate are up for re-election in November, making this vote politically significant. Before the vote, House Democrats met in their first in-person all-caucus meeting in over a month to discuss the measure. Representative Ted Lieu, vice chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, argued that Congress had enough time to move forward with a long-term funding package. Lieu criticized Republicans for not being able to govern effectively and said the current approach was not good for running the federal government.
The Senate had already approved the measure in August, and it will now go to President Donald Trump for signature into law. Without this funding bill, government operations would have stopped at the end of September. This early passage of a continuing resolution to avoid a shutdown is unusual for Congress, according to The Hill.
In the run-up to the vote, top House Democrats said they were ready to support the Senate version of the bill, which included some policy changes they favored, according to a report from The Guardian. However, Republicans later passed a separate funding bill that allocated money to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection for the duration of Trump’s presidency. That bill did not include reforms to immigration enforcement, which was a point of contention among Democrats.
The funding measure passed by the House will keep government departments operating until December 11, The Baltimore Sun reported. This vote comes amid ongoing political tensions and challenges in passing long-term federal budgets.
IMAGE: United States House of Representatives chamber at the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C.. Photo: United States House of Representatives or Office of the Speaker of the House / Wikimedia, taken 2017-02-27, Public domain